Vintage Skills and Style in the Modern World

The Vintage Home

Home is for everyone.

Homemaking. Housewifery. Preventing squalor. Whatever you call it, we’ve been doing it for a long time, and it makes sense that we can learn some things from people who did it before us.

Virtually all of the words that have to do with the care and upkeep of the home, including “the home” are almost automatically assumed to be feminine. This is, of course, due to traditional gender roles and such, but I maintain that homemaking does not have to be gendered.

Domesticity gets a bad rap, but I think it holds a lot of potential for pleasure. And not in a home magazine pristine sense, or a “if you just quit your job and cleaned all day, you’d be truly fulfilled” sense, either. There’s something scrappy about doing things yourself. Some people call this “radical domesticity.” Some people call it “homemaking.” Whatever you call it, ther’s honor in caring for the place where your life happens.

Take a look at these posts on old-fashioned homemaking, and see if anything works for you.